MY young friends, we have now, as it were, come to the end of our journey. Together have we traveled through the year. If its beginning was the morning, we have now reached the evening of our day. Was early spring the infancy of the year, now have we arrived at its old age, and all around reminds us of darkness, sleep, and death.
You may think that winter will not afford the pleasures of promising spring, and glorious summer, and fruitful autumn. True, you will see or hear but little of all the creatures we have watched together for the whole year. Our smaller wild insects and animals are still fast asleep and snug in their hiding places, either under ground, or in crevices in trees and walls. Few are the birds now to be seen. Yet let me say to my young friends, be not cowards, brace yourselves up for a storm, sally forth in the snow and even in mid-winter you will find much to amuse and instruct. Listen for the robin, look out for the tiny wren hopping about with his tail erect as if bidding defiance to the cold. Only throw out a few crumbs about your country home, and you will soon have a crowd of visitors;- sparrows, titmice, chaffinches, and the fine large blackbird will gather around to share your hospitality.
From plants and flowers, end trees, how much may you learn even now. God is as active in the winter as in the summer; only His care has now wrapped up the buds, and the roots, and is taking care of the seeds, just as surely as He is of the lizard, the snake, the toad, and the frog, all numbed with the cold, and snugly waiting for the warmth of spring to call them back to life and activity again.
If the winter is severe, we may now look for snow; and what boy or even girl loves not a good game with that? But have you not heard grandfather often say, "Winters are not what they were when I was a lad"? I believe this is true. Fifty years ago snow would often lie on the ground for weeks together, and streams and rivers would be hard frozen for the whole of December and January. What a beautiful sight is a gentle fall of snow, covering all nature with its lovely mantle! About snow, then, let us have a little talk together. By the aid of a microscope you would find every particle or flake of snow exquisitely beautiful, regular and of endless variety of forms. Commonly a snowflake consists of a series of crystals, formed independently in the upper regions of the air. These unite together in groups while descending, and form the most beautiful stars or wheels with regular diverging rays. Their shape is endless, but they have all one common center with six rays branching off. Our engraving will give you an idea of the beautiful regularity with which they are always formed. Every particle in the whole world has got some such exact form, only they are infinite in variety.
Snow is formed and falls very differently in different parts. With us it falls in flakes and soon becomes sufficiently hard to bear our weight; but on the Alps, which you have all heard of, it falls so lightly that it is impossible to walk on it, and the traveler sinks at once six or eight feet deep and it is this circumstance which causes so many to be lost while traveling on the Alps. In America, snow falls much more heavily than with us. I have seen it in Chicago drift against the houses as high as the roof, and the people have had to cut tunnels from their doors. I have traveled on the prairies with snow on each side of the railway as high as the tops of the carriages. Once, I saw a party who had been blocked up with snow for seven days on the rails, many miles from a village, during which they must have perished but for a cargo of oysters and crackers which happened to be on board.
This, however, is not to be compared with the accumulations of snow a on high mountains and valleys. You have all heard of the terrible avalanches on the Alps which are always a terror to the traveler and the shepherd, and which have sometimes buried whole villages. Avalanches are generally formed by enormous masses of snow, which from the tops of the mountains come rolling down into the valleys. So easily are these vast overhanging masses disturbed, that in summer, and in the heat of the day especially, the slightest vibration in the air will bring them down. In the mountain passes, where there is the most reason to dread them, the mule-drivers always travel before day, the time when they are least to be feared; and in order not to agitate the air, they observe absolute silence. But in spite of every care, at different times, many hundreds of men have perished at once, buried and crushed under their weight. In the fifteenth century, no fewer than 400 Austrian soldiers were buried under one of these falls of snow. Sometimes timely warning is given that a terrible avalanche is likely to break away near some village, and you may readily imagine what a scene of terror immediately follows. In an instant the cry of alarm runs through the valley; every house is vacated; old and young, men, women, children, and cattle flee in the wildest confusion, and woe be to any that remain to gather up their stuff!
Frightful indeed are the frozen solitudes of these mountains, and a horrible death seems at each step to threaten the rash mortal who enters them. On one side the avalanche threatens to bury him; beneath his feet open frightful chasms in which he would be shattered, while cold and hunger may destroy him. Every day the names of new victims are inscribed in the record of death, and yet each day some dauntless traveler tries a new enterprise. Even in the most rigorous seasons, the smuggler, the peddler, and the courier brave the perils of the Alps in defiance of the snows and the avalanche, not unfrequently perishing in the attempt to gain the Swiss or the Italian side of the Alps. These are often indebted to the monks and St. Bernard dogs for the preservation of life. “The night was calm and beautiful,"says a summer guest at the hospital of the monks, “when one of the monks said, There is a company ascending the mountain on the Swiss side but silent as the grave was everything around us, our ears could not perceive a sound. He said they were very distant. He was right; the party arrived long enough after to astonish us at the perception which he must have had of their approach.”
You have all heard of the famous St. Bernard dogs, and the wonderful intelligence they display in discovering and helping the perishing traveler. They will scent him many feet below the snow scratching away the drift, rousing the dying man from his stupefying sleep, and informing the monks of their discovery by a peculiar bark. One of these dogs during his career saved the lives of forty persons, and is known to fame by finding a child in a frozen state, succeeding in restoring animation, and then bearing him upon his back to the hospital.
In Scotland, there is always much more snow than in England. History tells us that in the year 1620, there was a dismal snow-storm that lasted thirteen days and nights, accompanied with great cold and a keen biting wind. About the fifth and six days, the young sheep fell into a torpid state and died and about the ninth and tenth the shepherds began to build up large semicircular walls of their dead, in order to afford some shelter for the living but to little purpose. On the fourteenth day, on many a high lying farm, not a survivor of extensive flocks was to be found, On one large moor, where upwards of twenty thousand sheep had been kept, only forty-five remained alive. Again, in the year 1795, whole flocks were overwhelmed by a sudden storm of drifting snows, and seventeen shepherds perished, besides thousands of sheep.
You have, perhaps, heard of the long frost in the year 1716, when the Thames was frozen so hard that tents were erected and fairs were held on the ice. American and Canadian rivers constantly freeze to the depth of three feet; they will bear any amount of weight, and in the winter months they become the high-ways for traffic. On the river at Chicago I have seen hundreds of horses with sleighs prancing about, and presenting with their tinkling bells a most animated scene. Sometimes confined air will produce a crack from one bank of the river to the other. A friend of mine with his wife, when taking a long ride at a tremendous gallop, suddenly came upon one of these cracks. What was to be done? To stop the horse was impossible. Nothing was left but a dash clean across. The intelligent animal saw the “fix," as the Yankees call it, and with one tremendous bound he cleared the fissure and landed passengers and sleigh safe on the other side.
History records some terrible winters going back for more than 1400 years.
In A. D. 401, the Black Sea was entirely frozen over; and in 763, the Dardenelles was frozen over.
In 1067, the cold was so intense, that most of the travelers in Germany were frozen to death on the roads.
In 1281, such quantities of snow fell in Austria, as to bury up the houses.
In 1684, many trees and even the oaks in England were split by the frost. Most of the hollies were killed. Coaches drove along the Thames. Almost all the birds perished.
In 1709, occurred perhaps the most intense winter on record. Rivers, lakes, and even seas for miles out were one solid mass of ice. The frost is said to have penetrated three yards into the ground. Birds and wild beasts on the continent were strewed dead in the fields, and men perished by thousands in their houses. Shrubs and vegetables died in England, and wheat rose from two to four pounds a quarter. In the south of France the olive plantations were almost entirely destroyed.
But if my young readers desire to know the full but terrible grandeur of a winter scene, you must become acquainted with Arctic explorations. The immense glaziers of the Alps, which we have spoken of, are as nothing when compared with the frozen deserts of the polar regions. It would be impossible to give a full account of these eternal snows and mountains of ice here. Masses of ice, thousands of miles in extent, cover the Northern regions, and no description it is said can convey an adequate idea of the grandeur and the terribleness of the scene.
In 1817, an icy continent, having an area of many thousand square miles, not far from the North of Iceland, suddenly broke up into an immense number of fragments which were scattered over the North Atlantic Ocean.
These great ice formations are due to the spherical formation of the earth, and what is called the obliquity of its axis, by which the presence of the sun is entirely withdrawn from the arctic and Antarctic regions for a large portion of the year, when intense frost reigns through the long dreary nights that prevail.
Every schoolboy should make himself familiar with the many expeditions to discover the. North Pole, and the north west passage.
And now, my young friends, I must say farewell. Throughout the year we have had pleasant talks of many things, small and great. I have tried to turn your hearts to Him who made them all.
These are His works and marvelous are they all. But as I have told you before, so would I again repeat,-it is impossible to know God, so as to be of any real value, till we know in Christ Jesus. Never can I truly value God as the creator, till I know Him as the God and Father of the Lord Jesus. This is the true God and eternal life.
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